A major cause of incidents at airports occurs during movement of airplanes or vehicles around other airplanes or objects. This annually causes significant claims to insurance companies as well as to airplane owners, fixed base operators, and airlines. To reduce the number of incidents, operators at airports have required workers to walk under the wings of an airplane under tow to identify prospective collisions before they occur, referred to as “wing walkers.”
The implementation of wing walkers has reduced the number of incidents, but requires staff resources and is quite expensive. In order to view the various portions of an airplane at risk of collision, two wing walkers may be required at both wing tips of the airplane and for larger airplanes a third walker may be located at the tail of the airplane. The multiple wing walkers may be in addition to an operator of the tug towing the airplane. Additionally, personnel located at or near the ground level may not be able to accurately judge the relative height of an oncoming object with a wing or tail which can be dozens of feet up in the air.
Further, communication among the wing walkers and the operator of the tug may be a challenge. Due to the amount of noise at airports, communication between the wing walkers and the operator is often limited to physical motions or whistles being blown by the wing walkers as the airplane is approaching an object. Visually, it may be difficult for the operator to maintain a line of sight with the wing walkers to perceive the physical motions. Similarly, when using whistles, there is a chance that the whistles will be drowned out by other noises, or that the operator may mistake a whistle associated with another airplane under tow. Accordingly, it can be difficult to move multiple airplanes within the same vicinity.
The present application addresses these and other problems.